Backup your WhatsApp data before it is deleted from Google Drive on November 12, 2018

Last month, WhatsApp and Google announced that from November 12, 2018, WhatsApp chat and multimedia backups will be free and unlimited for all users. This news means that the backups will not be counted against a user’s Drive space. However, it comes with a catch. If any WhatsApp backups have not been updated in more than a year, they will be automatically deleted from storage.

How to save your WhatsApp chats from being deleted?

To retain your old chats and media data, one can simply perform a manual backup of their chat. To do this, the user needs to head to the Chats section in Settings of WhatsApp. Here, navigate to the Chat Backup section and tap on Backup Now button. Do note that one needs to be connected to Wi-Fi for backing up their chat and media or else they need to change the ‘Back up over’ setting to both Wi-Fi and Cellular. Additionally, one is advised to change Google Drive settings in the same section so that the app can take automatic periodic backups of your chat.

It is highly unlikely that users have not taken any chat backups in a year as WhatsApp itself has a backup schedule. However, if this is the case for someone, they are recommended to follow the above steps to save their previously backed up data from being permanently deleted from Google Drive. WhatsApp makes use of Google Drive to save a user’s backup, which takes up a considerable amount of size depending upon how much media is being backed up along with the chats.